Borrell: Use Russian frozen assets for Ukraine financing

Borrell told the Financial Times that such a move would be similar to Washington's, when he used the Afghan Central Bank's frozen assets following the return of the Taliban to power to help war-torn Afghanistan.

In March, Russia said sanctions against it due to the war in Ukraine have frozen about $300 billion worth of assets -- half of its total gold and currency reserves, held abroad by Russia's Central Bank.

The European Commission has said that the reconstruction price could reach hundreds of billion dollars and the EU's top centres should consider the possibility of sequencing the frozen Russian currency reserves to help finance reconstruction in Ukraine after war”, Borrell told Financial Times.

“We have the money in our pockets and someone should explain why such a decision can be applied to Afghan money and not to Russian money”, he added.

After the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the American administration of President Joe Biden froze almost $7 billion of central bank assets held at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.

In February, the White House said it planned to use half the assets currently frozen in America for humanitarian aid, and the rest could be used to compensate the victims' families of the September 11, 2001.

Borrell said such a move could be one of the ways Russia could be forced to pay “war sharing” for the unprotested invasion against Ukraine, which it started on 24 February.

This is one of the most important political questions currently on the table: who will pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine?”, he said.